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Monday, February 15, 2016

Babble. Babble. Babble.

I castigate realists, Islamists and all ideologues with equal vigor, but at end of the day, I do realize that the great majority of them are just people like me with their own vision of the world to which they a right to express and advocate, a right that is no less legitimate than mine. Also, in many if not most cases, I would be willing to share a drink them, and would invite them home to meet my family. The claim I make that I judge their policies by assessing their actual impact on our world is matched by a similar claim on their part, and is, as such, quite irrelevant.

The policies I advocate are bound to lead to many deaths, just like theirs. Even when I advocated nonviolence, I did so knowing that people are bound to die and in droves. The regime’s nature and history made sure of that. Those who took part in the movement knew that the struggle was going to be tough, and that many of them were bound to will die. No one was acting under the illusion of perfect safety. But no one would have been able to predict how bad things will get. Still, the realists and the idealists and the dupes advocating nonintervention are for the most part convinced with the correctness and even righteousness of their stand. But they are no more or less intelligent or irrational than their counterparts advocating intervention. Each side believes the other’s wrong. Each side knows that their choice is conducive to bloodshed. But this is not meant to embrace moral relativism. Authoritarian leaders are always morally wrong even when they are tactically right. But when decent people disagree things are always relative, even when the price is high.

So, after all is said and done, this world is fucked up despite the decency of the overwhelming majority of its peoples. It’s fucked up because we are all fucked up, even if differently so. Conversely, the world could be considered as mostly decent as well, since the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants are. But, there is no catharsis in this for me, and I actually don't have a specific point to make here. I am just babbling. Babble. Babble. Babble.

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian-American author and pro-democracy activist based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.

The Delirica

The Delirica is a companion blog to the Daily Digest of Global Delirium meant to highlight certain DDGD items by publishing them as separate posts. Also, the Delirica republishes articles by Ammar that appeared on other sites since 2016. Older articles can be found on Ammar's internet archive: Ammar.World